After a long hard day at work, heading to a sweaty weights room probably isn’t the first thing you want to do. But you know you can’t slack off in your quest for bigger, better muscles. So why not use supersets to cut your workout time, increase the intensity and get better results, faster?

Supersets work by doubling your effort, with back-to-back sets of different exercises. But because these exercises are arranged to recruit different muscle groups, you can maintain the intensity and hit your workout goals in less time. The workouts over the next three pages have been arranged to pit opposing muscle groups or movements against each other, usually along the same planes of movement so each exercise lays off the muscle fibres you’ve just targeted and turns up the heat on others.

Remember to eat a high-protein meal (20-30g protein) within two hours of working out so your body can repair the micro-tears in your muscles in time for the next visit to the gym. If you haven’t already seen our expert nutrition advice, visit our experts page for some ideas on how to fuel your workouts.

How to do this workout

Do each workout once a week, leaving at least one day’s rest between the different workouts. Warm up by doing five minutes on a cardio machine then do warm-up sets of press-ups or chin-ups and bodyweight squats to raise your heart rate and get your muscles warmed up.

Now do the eight reps of the first exercise in the superset. Then, without pausing for a rest, go straight into eight reps of the next exercise in the superset. Rest for 90 seconds between each superset and two minutes between each pair of supersets.